Italian Court Rules Phone Sex OK

If a man pays a woman to talk dirty to him over the phone, does this constitute prostitution? That was the tricky decision facing some of Italy's best legal brains.

The case the Italian supreme court had to rule on involved a man from Milan who had been convicted by a lower court of sexual exploitation after paying a woman for phone sex. 

That verdict, however, was overturned in a ruling that asserted: "verbally servicing an interlocutor for the purpose of sexual excitement does not constitute a sexual service if it does not involve the bodily erogenous zones of the person who is getting paid for such a service."

The man and the women were, however, reminded that if the customer requests the vendor to perform a specific sex act, it may well constitute prostitution.